Judge Found Not Guilty By Reason Of Insanity In Battery Trial

Cynthia Brim, a Cook County judge, has been barred from her duties following allegations she pushed a sheriff's deputy. (Cook County Sheriff's Department)

CHICAGO (STMW) — Cook County Judge Cynthia Brim, who suffers from long-term mental illness, was found not guilty by reason of insanity Monday in her misdemeanor battery trial.

Brim must now undergo an evaluation to determine whether she requires further inpatient or outpatient treatment.

Brim was accused of shoving a sheriff’s deputy in March 2012 at the Daley Center and had been hospitalized five times for psychotic episodes since 1993, a year before she took the bench.

Mathew Markos, a forensic psychiatrist who testified at Brim’s trial Monday, recounted her medical history.

Markos asserted she was “legally insane” at the time — suffering from another psychotic episode that required hospitalization.

In 2004, she was carried out of a courtroom on a stretcher. Markos interviewed Brim in the wake if her arrest — by court order to determine whether she was fit to stand trial. Markos testified she had a fuzzy recollection of the events that led to her arrest – common in such episodes.

“She remembers being handcuffed and taken to lockup,” Markos said.

She suffers from a bipolar disorder and schizoaffective disorder and had been taking medication but had gone off it. Sheriff’s deputies testified earlier that they witnessed Brim – dressed in hospital scrubs and a fur coat – shove the deputy after he questioned her about a set of keys she tossed at a security checkpoint.

Deputy Herbert Edwards testified that the judge shoved him in the chest.

Brim’s attorneys asked the judge to find her not guilty by reason of insanity.

Brim, 54, has been on the bench since 1994 and won another six-year term in November despite low marks from the local bar associations over the years and her arrest. Just days after her arrest, she was suspended indefinitely — while keeping her $182,000-a-year salary — by a panel of supervising Cook County judges.